Too many issues – and too many millions of lives – weigh in the balance for the Senate to allow Barack Obama's Supreme Court nomination to move forward, pro-life and religious liberty groups say.
President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday morning. The 63-year-old is the chief judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Judge Merrick Garland is President Obama’s pro-abortion pick to tempt some Republicans to act now to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. The president’s commitment to unrestricted, unmonitored and taxpayer funded abortion is well known,” said Clarke Forsythe, acting president of Americans United for Life. “Pro-life Americans agree with the assessments of President Obama, Vice President Biden and even Sen. Chuck Schumer, all of whom urged the Senate to hold the line against Supreme Court picks late in a president’s term.”
Judge Garland has never ruled on abortion, sources told local reporters. However, observers say some of his actions betray support for abortion-on-demand.
Merrick Garland clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, who has been described as “the driving force behind the writing of Roe v. Wade,” and Garland called the release of Roe author Harry Blackmun's private papers a “great gift to the country,” according to the New York Times.
Although he is often described as a “moderate centrist” jurist, pro-life leaders stated that's not good enough when replacing a towering conservative intellect like Justice Antonin Scalia.
“Judge Garland is far from being a consensus nominee and would be an incredibly different jurist than Justice Scalia,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. "Some of Judge Garland's most recent opinions and dissents raises serious questions about his ability to serve as a constitutionalist.”
Someone like Garland may be more in the mode of Justices Anthony Kennedy or O'Connor.
"This nomination will upset the balance of the Supreme Court to the radical Left for many decades. Such a seismic shift in the highest court of the land must be presented to the people," said Penny Nance, the president and CEO of Concerned Women for America.
While Garland lacks case history on abortion, critics say he has indicated liberal leanings by calling into question Second Amendment gun rights and siding with environmentalist regulations. Pro-life leaders say the stakes if he holds liberal views on abortion are infinitely higher.
“Millions of lives hang in the balance of each ruling on abortion put forth by the Supreme Court,” Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, said in a media statement.
Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel said the pick will, in fact, determine “the future of America.”
That's why pro-life leaders are urging the Republican-led U.S. Senate to take no action on this or any future Obama nomination.
“I strongly urge the members of the Judiciary Committee to hold fast to their promise, for the sake of the future of our country and the future of our posterity,” said Newman. “The Senate Republican leadership cannot afford to break this important promise to their conservative, pro-life base, if they expect us to vote for any of them ever again.”
"The next president — Republican or Democrat — should be in the position to fill the Court's vacancy with the advice and consent of the Senate," agreed Michael Needham, the CEO of Heritage Action.
Forsythe said the voters deserve the right to weigh in on the direction of the nation’s most powerful court, because “the Supreme Court has set itself up as the nation’s ‘Abortion Control Board’ in its sweeping Roe v. Wade decision.”
Entrusting such a choice to Barack Obama, often described as “the most pro-abortion president in history,” could be catastrophic, they warn.
“We do not know this nominee but we do know Barack Obama. Anyone he nominates will join the voting bloc on the court that consistently upholds abortion on-demand,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. “The president should not be permitted one last opportunity to stack the court with pro-abortion justices.”
Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life agreed, “Judge Garland has no history of abortion rulings but just look at who appointed him: the most pro-abortion president in our nation’s history. For that reason alone, the Senate should halt his nomination until the next president is elected, and hopefully appoint a judge with a record of pro-life rulings.”
President Obama blasted the GOP's blockade on his nomination, stating that it would unleash a bitter and endless game of “tie-for-tat” when a Republican president hopes to name his own justice to the High Court.
National Right to Life Legislative Director Douglas Johnson called such concerns "laughable, coming from Obama, who filibustered Samuel Alito's nomination, and whose administration has repeatedly urged the Supreme Court to strike down state laws that violate no constitutional text.”
Rejecting a president's Supreme Court nomination has a long precedent, Perkins noted. “Twenty-five other nominees to the Supreme Court have not received an up-or-down vote,” he said.
In the meantime, Forsythe said, the Supreme Court is more than capable of operating well with eight justices. “There’s no magic to the number nine. The number of justices is not set by the Constitution, but by statute,” he said. “Congress reduced the number of justices in 1866, then increased the number to 10, before reducing the number to nine in 1871, where it has remained.”
And the Supreme Court should continue to function with eight justices until next January 20, according to religious liberty attorney Kelly Shackelford of the First Liberty Institute.
“The best path forward for religious liberty is to not hold any hearings or votes on any Supreme Court nominee at this time,” he said.
To make any consideration before the next president is inaugurated “would undermine democracy by denying the American people a voice in the future of their country,” he said.
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